It’s hard not to become cynical when watching the political machine running at full tilt. This is especially true for those of uswhose lives are affected by disability, many of whom have been expecting a government backslide on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) funding from the word go.

Political history is littered with the hollowed out remains of grand schemes that were launched with claims of universal approval, only to be gored by the supposed realpolitik of “tough decisions” and “budget constraints” (Gonski anyone? NBN perhaps?).

The NDIS always felt vulnerable to political machinations; it is expensive (in the short term) and supports some of the most marginalised in our society, people who rarely get a voice in the decision making on public policy.

As feared, the scheme has now become a political gaming chip, thrown into the pot in a bid to force family benefit cuts through the senate. I’m surprised that it has taken this long, but the fact that this kind of gamesmanship seemed inevitable doesn’t make me feel any less uneasy about the scheme’s long term future.

But there’s something more fundamental that strikes at the heart of the problem when programmes such as the NDIS come into play, and it’s all to do with the way that the discussion is framed.

The linking of the NDIS budgets and welfare payments to families is a deliberate attempt to hold the scheme to ransom for political gain. But it also keeps a firewall between government spending on the most disadvantaged in society and policy decisions that affect the top earners and big business.

The government-commissioned Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) report back in 2011 highlighted Australia’s poor performance among OECD countries in both employment participation and poverty among those with disabilities, and there is overwhelming public support for the NDIS.

The case for the scheme is not just about giving everyone a “fair go”, nor is it only about quality of life. There are sound economic justifications too. Both the PwC report, and the more exhaustive productivity commission’s economic analysis made the case that the NDIS would eventually pay for itself. The PwC’s projected figures demonstrated that even the cost of doing nothing would exceed the cost of implementing the NDIS by 2025.

The economic benefits of the NDIS cannot be overstated. The scheme has the potential to enable more disabled people as well as carers to find employment, eventually making many of them net tax contributors. Early intervention and support for people with disabilities is also clearly linked to a reduction in health problems in later life. This represents a huge cost-saving potential for state and federal health budgets.

Unfortunately, the economic argument is overlooked by politicians who lack the imagination or conviction to present the case effectively. Imagine a situation where, instead of linking welfare cuts to funding the NDIS, the same case was made as a justification for a reduction in the proposed $50bn tax cuts for big business.

I am confident that there would even be broad public support for leaving business tax as it is (especially in an economy which is still growing) in order to fund a programme that is universally recognised as necessary and long overdue, and which helps some of the most disadvantaged in our society. Especially when the long term benefits of the scheme include a public spending reduction of $4-5bn by 2025.

The same case could be made for pursuing corporate tax avoidance, or abolishing negative gearing for owners of multiple homes, but such a justification would no doubt be denounced as political gamesmanship in a way that the NDIS/welfare conflation is not.

If the NDIS is perceived in Canberra as irrevocably linked to welfare budgets, then I can suggest some other areas where money could be ring-fenced for a specific spend:

Revenue from speeding fines could be used to fund additional specialist units or extra rehabilitation therapies for people with serious injuries most commonly resulting from car accidents. Tax raised from alcohol sales could be used to bridge the appalling shortfall in services for those affected by domestic violence. And while we’re at it, perhaps a carbon tax that could be used to fund an effective programme of environmental intervention to protect what is left of the Great Barrier Reef.

As would be the case with these ideas, there appears to be a lack of appetite for the NDIS in Canberra. The platitudes are very noble, but the cynical way in which it is being used as a justification for welfare cuts will muddy the waters and eventually pave the way for the scheme to also be scaled back, along with the family welfare benefits currently under threat.